Neil Ackroyd's life was trolling along reasonably easily into his late thirties. He was in work, married, and had a boy and a girl. But then he and his wife separated. The kids were 10 and 13 when he first collapsed, one day in 2000, while crossing the road outside his mum's house.

Then, on a day out in Bridlington with the kids, he fell on the seafront. Heading back to Bradford with them, he collapsed again on the train. This time he came to in Bradford Royal Infirmary.

It was terrifying. He had no idea what was wrong, so he went to his GP, Andy Hanson, whom he'd known from school, and who had more than a passing interest in things neurological. Hanson suspected epilepsy, and an MRI scan proved him right. "When I got the result, I didn't ask for any support," Ackroyd says. "I didn't want support. I just wanted to stop it happening."

It may be obvious to say this, but what mattered to Ackroyd was not the diagnosis. Of course, he had to know what was wrong. And, not unusually, it took six months to get the medication right. But during that time, and since, the most important thing in his life was that the GP listened to Ackroyd's terror. "He just showed an interest," he says. "I didn't even know what my fears were, but Andy listened. He never watched the clock. He talked openly. He knew not to send me to support groups. That wasn't my thing. I didn't want anti-depressants. I didn't want to go down that route. He didn't press me. I saw him every two weeks. The acceptance took a while. And I know Andy. He wouldn't just be doing that for me."

Two years later, just as Ackroyd was coming to terms with the epilepsy, he went to Bradford city centre one day. He thought it was a bit foggy. It wasn't. Two weeks later, he was blind. His optic nerve had gone. Registering as blind took six months. They lost his records. "You can't get any help until you're registered - and then once you are, you can't keep social services away," Ackroyd says with a wry smile. What mattered most to him again was not the physical aids, but the fact that his social worker was himself partially sighted. "I went on a train one day and it was terrifying. He understood that."

After three years of blindness, he was managing reasonably well. It was then he had the stroke, losing much of the use of his right arm and leg, and the ability to swallow. He is now fed by a tube directly to his stomach from a back pack. The pump hums and quietly ticks. "So if I go on a train I get in a compartment on my own, otherwise people run away."

"The stroke set me back," he says, with sardonic understatement, "and what I needed more than anything was to do something with my life."

The two great passions in his life are obvious as soon as you walk into his house. Books about the Beatles and about military history are everywhere.

Julie Oxley, a worker with Supported Lives,a homecare agency in Bradford that aims to meet people's individual aspirations, talked to Ackroyd last autumn. Two weeks later, she arranged for him to work as a volunteer at the Royal Armoury in Leeds, devising ways of making exhibits "real" for people who are blind. "You can't touch them," Ackroyd says. "Things like 17th-century Indian elephant armour are too fragile. So they're making replicas. That way someone blind can hold the elbow joint of a suit of armour and feel how the hinges work." This year, he hopes to start similar work with the Beatles museum in Liverpool. "If I had two dream jobs ...," he says, his voice trailing off. "But I'd never have had the guts to approach them myself."

The extraordinary train of events in Ackroyd's life over the last six years tells us something very ordinary about care. Material support is important, but what has given real texture to his life is the ability of professionals such as Hanson and Oxley to cherish his fears, listen to his passions and match his aspirations.

It's understandable that we can forget it among the appalling pressure of targets and service delivery. But if it's not too much of a Beatles cliche to say it, while it may not be all you need, love is what gets you back into life.